Silk Vol 1 - Tide of Terror
by lil-sea-salt
Summary: After being freed from the bunker that she called home for a decade, Cindy Moon starts to settle into your new life. She grapples with her on again off again relationship with Peter Parker before deciding to return to Korea to rekindle old family ties. Or so she thinks. Little does she know that Asia will bring her a whole new perspective on crime fighting-
1. Tide of Terror

Silk or as she was known on the civilian side-Cindy Moon-was not excited to be awoken at three am. She sighed with the irritating realization that she would not be able to fall back asleep and opened her eyes fully to see something blue and red hanging off her ceiling,

Dear God, it was hard enough ignoring her own physical needs when the caped crusader himself paid a visit. She rubbed her eyes and slowly came to full awareness that the root of her insomnia was hanging from the ceiling.

And . . . like most annoying men, he was doing absolutely nothing about it.

"You-" Her voice came out more husky than she intended so she cleared her throat. "Why are you here Peter?"

He retracted his webbing on her ceiling and landed smoothly in front of her. He removed his mask and looked around nervously. She pushed him back roughly and he got up to retreat farther into the awning of her doorway. He was loose limbed as he leaned against the doorway. "I wanted to see you, Cindy. I was worried when I heard you got a job offer from the agents at S.H.I.E.L.D."

"So-instead of just calling me you decided to show up here? Without an invitation, I may add."

Peter's expression changed from one of concern to exasperation. "I did call. Your phone was turned off. I texted you I was going to stop by during patrol."

"I don't like the way you make me feel when I'm around you."

"I'm not here for-" Cindy shot him a death glare so he put both hands up and gave her some ground. "Ok, yeah. I did want that too, but we can sit in the same room without touching each other. Look I haven't touched you and you haven't touched me, We're doing it right now. If you don't feel safe at any point, I know you could hurt me, but I will give you space. I've been giving you space. I didn't talk to you for 13 days/"

"That's beyond the point, Parker. It's trust. Knock on the window if I'm avoiding you. Being woken up via pheromones is like waking up via a boner."

Peter Parker immediately cringed, which was her intention. He backtracked. "Ok, I'm sorry. Can we move on to why I wanted to get ahold of you?"

Cindy sighed. "Let's get some coffee and Pocky. I'm sure you could y\use the pick me up. I can get suited up and we'll do whatever you want-that doesn't involve physical contact-for the next three hours."

"You don't have work tomorrow, it's memorial day."

"I just wanted to see whether or not you were in a rush. You're obviously not. Or whatever crime you want me to help you with lacks some immediacy." Cindy thrust the covers aside so they crumbled onto the floor in a pile. Peter recoiled at her mess. She threw her hair up into a bun and started webbing her Silk costume.

"You're not going to pick that up?"

"Not until I do laundry. So no. Why don't you get the coffee ready? The Pocky is in the cabinet above the fridge so the cats don't get to it."

Peter nodded automatically before disappearing into the dark kitchen. She could hear him shoot webbing onto the blinds to close them and a smack at the cats were thrown against the wall as they both attempted to attack him. "Free them later," he said as he started opening cabinets. He hadn't paid attention to any of her directions.

Cindy sighed and checked her backside out to make sure it was fully covered, She loved the ability to make her own suit as she could add padding wherever she wanted. Owing up to superheroine standards was hard, but today she had no need to make sure her figure was perfect-she wasn't in the mood for Peter Parker.

"Cindy your coffee's getting cold."

"Yeah, reheat it."

She heard the microwave's hum stutter to a stop as she walked into the kitchen fully suited up.

"You look nice "

Cindy grabbed her coffee roughly from Peter's outstretched hand. "I always look nice. I make my own suit." She turned to the mewling cats anchored to the wall. "Nice decorations. I did need to clean that wall. You know you could've just put webbing around their paws or webbed them into their open kennels?"

"Too much work." Peter cracked a stick of Pocky in half before shoving it into his mouth.

"Well, now that we're more friendly, let's cut to the chase."

Peter spun a string of webbing onto Cindy's idle iPad, both unlocking it and bringing it closer. He typed in a URL quickly and shoved it in her face?

It was a text heavy academic journal, the article he'd typed into the search engine showed up as unavailable. "What am I supposed to be looking at?"

"This is the research that my father did into the radioactive spider that bit both of us."

"Why is it unavailable?"

"The government deemed it too dangerous so they prevented the publication and labelled his work as classified."

"Didn't my parents work on this as well?"

"Your parents were working on a cure, not on the cause?"

"Where;s the file now? How did you find out about this? Aren't you the CEO of a company who moonlights as a superhero? How did you have time or the resources-"

"Is that important?"

"No. How do we get it?"

"I got a tipoff that it's at NYPD's headquarters right now?"

Cindy finished her drink in one long continuous sip.

* * *

Travelling via web-slinging was always refreshing, wind brushing aside hair and it was mindless. The city opening like a flower, the heart of New York beating wildly in the open air. The quick slosh of someone else was unwelcome. Peter had caught up to her. He was only a block and a half behind her now. She'd never been to the police headquarters so they would need to stop and plan their method of entry.

She picked a secluded church top with a looming gremlin or gargoyle before taking a breathe,

Peter was wheezing and it took a couple of minutes to catch his breath. They didn't often speak about the disparity between them-her ability in some respect had manifest in different aspect.

"You're excited." Peter said as his folded his limbs next to hers.

"I'm eager to get back to bed-without you. I need to clean the webbing off my cats. I wanted to read more into my parent's work. Also my brother, Alfred."

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your problem. I'll handle it. I can."

Peter carefully put his arm on Cindy's shoulder. She didn't flinch so he kept it there. She could feel the spike in desire, but noted his control. Peter wasn't trying to trick her. He just wanted her to feel comforted and that if she wanted it, he would help her.


	2. Tide of Terror II

"It's not that simple Parker. I wish it was." Cindy warily turned to Peter. "Shall we get your file?"

Peter retracted his arm and pointed to a smoking vent that they could see from their vantage point.

Cindy laughed outright. "That's the wrong vent."

"That's the right vent. Smell the paper. It was last held by my father so you should be able to smell me through that vent."

Cindy closed her eyes and breathed through her nose. She was intimately aware of Peter sitting next to her, but she ignored his aroma to focus on the faint odor coming from the vent Parker had indicated. She instantly had a stream of images flash thru her mind-the steel of the vent, the curves and twists, a revolving fan, a pair of green-gray eyes, a coffee soaked moustache, fingers turning pages, a ruffle, then the paper itself-Peter but also not.

Her eyes flickered open and she turned to Peter. "It's there. Sitting on the commissioner's desk. Do we both go get it or is it just me? Why didn't you just get it yourself and email me the PDF or bring me the PDF on a flash or hard drive? Why did you drag me all the way out here in the middle of the night if you could just do it yourself."

Peter threw a clump of webbing at the vent and instantly a stream of lasers vapourized it.

Cindy laughed outright. She moved through Peter's field of vision and before he could blink the lasers were caked with webbing and the grate of the vent was pushed aside. She was sitting upright in the awning of the vent. Her hair was blowing wildly and her eyes were shining with mirth. "Are you coming, Spidey?"

"Ok" Peter was unsettled by the burst of enthusiasm. He was wary. "Are you sure? All I really needed was just someone to deal with the lasers. If you're not interested you can leave."

"I want to stay. It's not as bad, the whole Silk-sense, as long as I keep moving it's just background noise. It's nice to have the clarity around you."

Peter leapt over next to Cindy and knocked himself a bit askew into her. She righted him, but didn't seem irritated by the act. Usually she would have been furious. Peter noticed his own Spidey-sense was dulled. He wondering if the airshaft had something to do with it-some strange new material to negate his or Silk's ability. It was rumored S/H/I/E.L.D. was trying something. He considered it before dismissing it. Silk was just learning control.

"Well, in any case," Peter said finally, "as long as it doesn't interfere with our work here."

Cindy sniffed the air curiously. "It's this way." She crept head and Peter wordlessly followed.

The shaft itself was clean, almost sterile, like it had been just recently added to the station. It was built with false corridors and gaps where there was no grate over a giant steel fan that loomed around them like a complimentary chainsaw. The lights would sporadically flicker on and off like a scene from the Ring. Once, Peter could've sworn that he saw the ghost of a caped crusader behind them.

"Cin-you do know where you're going right? Maybe we should've marked-"

"Shut up, we're here." She pointed to the area below her butt. "How do we remove the panels? I don't want to create any more damage than we already did. I can make it so it looked like a raccoon got in at the front gate."

Peter cleared his throat. He pulled a screwdriver out of a webbed fanny pack around his waist. "No as sophisticated as the Batman utility belt, but this should work for this."

Cindy scoffed. "Low tech." She crossed her arms and gave Peter some space to unscrew the panel. As he was carefully twisting the tool, Cindy wondered aloud, "Do you think we could ever make tools out of webbing?"

Peter paused to shift the loose screws to his pouch before continuing on the thread. "I doubt it. Our webbing as a spongy consistency with air pockets. The necessary detail to crystallize it would need practiced concentration to specialize it to that level. Theoretically yes, but the physics behind it would need like a Buddhist monk's level of concentration. You could try it when I screw the bolts back in if you want."

Cindy contemplated the idea as Peter gently lifted the panel. Both peered down into the darkened office. Peter made a move to start webbing before Cindy smacked him. Cameras, she mouthed as he recoiled from the blow. Cindy quickly disabled the cameras by maneuvering herself stealthy to fog up the lenses with water. The easiest way would have been to cover the cameras with webbing, but since the point of the exercise was to avoid detection, a more organic approach was more appropriate.

Peter searched through the pages on the commissioner's desk. He was tempted to pick the lock on the safe, but knew a research paper wouldn't be deemed as something that important by a non-scientist. He tried to sniff the document out. But the aroma eluded him. Cindy could see he was having some issue so she started helping. They combed through his desk and it wasn't until Cindy checked the bookshelves that she saw a file shoved between two heavy instruction manuals.

"It's here."

"Good job, we can get out of here."

"Shouldn't we make a photocopy instead of just taking it?"

"There are multiple copies floating around Sil-the guy is just going to think that he misplaced it. It wasn't even in the safe, his assistant or secretary could have easily come in here and grabbed it by mistake."

They returned back through the way they came meticulously erasing evidence that they had come and rendezvous back at Cindy's apartment. The contents of the document file were spread across a table top as both spider heroes simultaneously called in sick to read through all the information available to them, The majority of it was cross referencing the names and articles referred. The magnitude was immense and the implications jarring.

The team responsible for creating the spider was in major violation of the Geneva conventions. There was downright human torture at moments supplemented with graphic images of screaming subjects or autopsies. The bodies usually had half missing with another half sewn on.

The magnetism between them would pulsate at times and they would both look away or move to opposite sides of the sofa until it subsided. Cindy was much too disturbed to want that kind of attention. She couldn't believe that Peter's parents were at the helm of something this grotesque. Peter himself seemed conflicted.

It was midnight when they'd finally finished. They broke their fast with a delivered pizza.. They ate in silence for a couple minutes before Peter quipped, "I don't think this is real?"

Cindy paused amid a bite. She considered this briefly before continuing her chewing. She tried to be careful with her words. "It is hard to admit that your parents weren't good people. For anyone that would be devastating. Especially if you spent so much time with an incorrect viewpoint or an idea of who they should've been. I thought Albert was going to be the perfect brother, but he is a recovering drug addict. He's not a strong person."

"My parents were good people. They didn't lock me up in-no, I mean Cindy they took care of me and made sure I had everything I needed in order for me to excel. They were strong enough to realize it wasn;t something they could provide."

"You were a kid when that happened. That's what your Aunt May wanted you to believe. If you thought they were strong maybe then you would become the strength they never had. Do you understand my logic, Peter? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm telling you to face the possibility. Your parents were human, they made mistakes too. I know it's a harsh reality to face."

Peter sat stock still for a couple seconds before grabbing the hood of his suit. "I need some space to figure some things out. I need to ask questions."

Cindy nodded as she looked down to take a sip of her tea. "We are not a couple. You don't need to ask my permission." As she finished her sip, she saw he had left before she'd finished.


	3. Tide of Terror III

Peter Parker was driven to work with all the enthusiasm of an emperor abdicating his rule.

He felt nothing.

Cindy had called him multiple times and sent text messages to the point he had blocked her on his phone. She could do so much better than him. He even doubted she would ever consider him to be a worthy partner.

As his thoughts were heavy he did not want to be comforted by the soft silky presence he felt next to him.

"Peter?"

Parker barked. "Please close the sunroof Javier."

The driver complied quietly.

In a white spider silk dress, Cindy Moon looked like a dripping siren. Peter shifted his legs uncomfortably.

Cindy's finger ran along the bridge of his chin. "I thought you could use some cheering up. You left before we could properly discussed this."

"You work in the opposite direction Cindy."

"So what?"

"Don't waste your time with someone who isn't worth it."

"I want you." She opened her legs and Peter could see the threads of her dress splitting. He quickly restrained the lower half of her body.

"Please. I want a clear head for a couple-"

Cindy pushed Peter's hands away from her body and webbing shot out from her fingers. Her dress was adjusted to a pair of jeans with a shimmery white top and a black blazer. More business casual than date night. Cindy caught Peter's eye. "Better?"

Peter nodded slowly. "I'm sorry. I hate ruining the mood, but-"

"No, it's ok. I don't have that much experience cheering you up so I wanted to try something. I'm not always in the mood for you so this is fair." Cindy rubbed Peter's palms. "I just wanted to comfort you after last night."

"I know that, but I'm CEO of a company. I also have an interesting second job."

"An interesting second job, huh? I wanted to make sure you were ok so now that I know that. I was thinking about going off on my own for a bit and kind of doing some reconnaissance work. What we found felt incomplete, either that someone had left that for us to find or as if there was some tampering with it."

Peter stiffened. "Moon, I don't have time to watch your back."

"I'm not going in. I'm just going to check out the area. But if you don't want me to go by myself I won't. I wanted to talk to you about something a little bit more personal as well. It's a normal people problem."

"Anything to take my mind off of this second life we have-"

"I want to go back to Korea."

"Korea? You've never been there Cindy."

"I wanted to meet my parent's parents and the family I have around there. One of my mom's sister got a hold of me through facebook and I wanted to go explore that side of myself. I was alone for so long that it just feels like the right place to go to find myself."

"Is Korea going to get Silkworm?"

"Probably, now that I'm thinking about it. It would be beautiful to see Seoul through web-slinging. Maybe hang around asia for a bit. I watched so much anime as a kid that I would love to see Japan or China. Maybe you could come with me?"

"Cindy-"

"Just think about it . . . I'm going to ask for an extended break anyway so you can think about it."

"How long were you-"

"I don't know Peter. There's something that draws us together. I feel like there's something drawing me there. I have dreams and visions of people there who want me to come and find them. There's so much of the world I haven't seen that I want to see."

* * *

Peter called Cindy when he saw she'd sent him her itinerary. She picked up after the first ring.

"Hey love bug."

"I can't believe you just said that. That's so-"

"Too much? I like the old Cindy Moon, but I want something different. I don't want to be defined by my past anymore."

"You never we're. You didn't try to kill me when you met me."

Cindy laughed. "No, I thought about it, but we were so overwhelmed by our connection that we acted on it instead of really trying to understand the brevity of the situation. Freedom is weird once you have it. I had no idea what to do, I'd been-"

Peter cut Cindy off. "It's ok. You're doing really well right now. You got a therapist, you're keeping a stable job. You're giving back to society in a positive way. There's a lot of things we didn't think you'd be able to do that you're doing exceptionally well. You adapt to changes well and I'm actually really proud of what you're doing now."

"You mean Korea?"

"Yeah, I can't believe you're serious about it. I didn't think you'd actually do it for a year or two at least. And, it's by yourself. You're normal, even after all of this."

"Peter, I'm not normal. I have nightmares. I still web up stuff in my sleep. I probably won't be able to be completely honest with everyone, but I want to try. I hate being logical all the time. I don't want to waste my life looking for my parents if I have a family there willing to reach out to me. I'm not going to give up, but I do want to have them in my life too."

"No I understand. If I didn't have Aunt May, it would have been hard for me to have the success that I have now. You need some family to really understand where you come from and where you go. I had a pretty serious breakup with a girl named Mary Jane just when I was graduating from high school. It would've been rough if I didn't have support."

"I don't need them to support me. I just want to meet them and know them."

"What are you doing now?"

"Oh I'm packing. The flight leaves tomorrow morning. My relatives are actually going to pick me up from the airport and they said it's fine if I stay in the hotel for a couple of days before I really get to know them."

"That's really nice of them. Did your parents ever speak Korean to you? Will there be a language barrier? I can send a translator with you if you feel like-"

"No, they speak both english and korean because my cousins studied in an english medium school. I spoke it when I was younger so I've forgotten a bit, but you know my memory is pretty good so I think I'll manage."

"Ok, if you need me you can call anytime. Literally and I will fly over right away."

"I don't know if I'm coming back soon."

"It's fine."

"I also got a therapist there too, so she'll be in touch with you as well. She's affiliated with S.H.I.E.L.D. as well so-"

"Wow, that's really cool Moon. You've planned like you're planning more like 6-8 months instead of a couple days like you were before."

"I want to give Seoul a good shot."

"Okay well, I hope I'll hear from you soon Moon."


End file.
